Do you replant the big bulbs of garlic?

[mountaindweller]

It is very difficult not to cook the bigger garlic bulbs. Do you really have to replant the biggest and fattest bulbs as all gardening books suggest? They have the same genetic information than the inner ones which are so hard to peel. Futhermore, I last year, I bought some cheap Chinese garlic in the supermarket for planting, but I don't eat Chinese garlic, if I only plant the outer ones I have to dischard the inner ones (last year I fed it to the sheep but still, poor sheep)

[Drahkk]

It's not the genetic material, but the amount of stored nutrition for the young plant to draw on. Larger cloves produce larger bulbs because the plants get a faster start due to greater food reserves allowing them to grow into larger plants before they have to rely entirely on photosynthesis.

As far as the smaller cloves, stop trying to peel them whole. You're going to cook them anyway, right? Crush them a little with the side of your knife blade and the papers fall off a lot easier.

MB

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Jun 28, 2012 23:12:19 GMT -5 mountaindweller said:

It is very difficult not to cook the bigger garlic bulbs. Do you really have to replant the biggest and fattest bulbs as all gardening books suggest?

That's the story of my life with just about every crop that I grow: I save the best for planting next year and eat the seconds. I plant plenty of small garlic cloves, and I harvest plenty of small garlic bulbs that are larger than what went into the ground, so either way, I make a good return on investment.

[Except with elephant garlic, which does not thrive in my garden, and thus gets smaller every year.]

For easier garlic peeling, try soaking the garlic in water in the fridge. After a few days the skin just sloughs off.

[steev]

Smash it a bit as Drahkk says, to loosen the husks. If, as I do, you're just going to saute garlic in a bit of oil for flavor, then mash it and don't bother peeling, although then you miss out on the cook's portion: the delicious, sticky sauteed garlic cloves.

Those puny little cloves at the center of a head are fine added as an unpeeled clump to some things, like pickles.

[mountaindweller]

Thanks! Actually yes I should simply chuck then in, I do so with the herbs I simply chuck in the whole stalk and everything why not the garlic?

[caledonian]

Shallots are something of an exception - the small bulbs form large bulbs when replanted, while the large bulbs 'shatter' into small bulbs so as to reproduce themselves. So if it's large bulbs you want, you shouldn't plant the largest bulbs in your crop.

But garlic? The smaller the bulb, the fewer resources the plantling has available.

[littleminnie]

Whoa really?! You blew my mind. I wish I knew that about shallots before. I threw out tons of tiny cloves because they kept getting smaller and smaller every year. This year I started seeds and I can see each plant is just a single bulb so it will be a small harvest and all replanted.

[blueadzuki]

From what I saw this year growing them, Rakkyo (Allium Chinense) also functions much like a shallot, except the bulbs never get all that big anyway and split very rapidly, so if you plant single bulbs in the fall; come harvers time you will get bulbs of rougly the same size, just now in clusters of 2-3.
Actually, you've given me good fuel for an experiment next year. Amongst the germplasm I managed to aquire this year is a trio of simply ENORMOUS shallots (they're the size of torpedo onions) It will be interesting to see if next year I wind up with a few shallots that are also titanic, some fairly large clusters of "normal" sized shallots or very small shallots in a truly HUGE cluster.

[caledonian]

You may have gotten shallots that managed to shed their virus load. I know there are some hybrid shallots out there now - any allium grown from seed seems to be bigger than the bulb-propagated ancestors. I've heard of the same thing happening when people get potato onions to set seed - giant bulbs are always the result.

If you cut them apart, you'll probably see that the smaller bulbs have only one 'core' - or only a few - while the largest have developed multiple cores in preparation for splitting into different plants.

Keep in mind that consuming the large bulbs might exert a selection pressure against largeness, too! Planting the smallest bulbs will tend to produce weaker plants in the long run - to get the largest bulbs, you want the largest small bulbs, if that makes sense.

For long-term propagation, you should plant a mixture of larger and smaller bulbs - the big ones will produce future planting stock, and the small ones will produce big bulbs.

[Walk]

We always plant large cloves from the biggest bulbs. We do this with our shallots too and they have not been getting smaller over the years. We seem to have a nice 1.5" average size now. They are an unknown variety, probably a dutch yellow type, maybe a potato onion? They are spring planted here as they don't overwinter well, but they keep tremendously well - usually 1.5 years from harvest 'til they are used up.

Garlic and shallots are maturing extra early this year due to the heat. Unfortunately, it's also been rather dry so far this growing season. The plants didn't get as lush as usual, so I'm concerned about what the harvest will look like.

We're still eating Russian Giant, Phillips, and Elephant garlic from last year's harvest. These varieties keep well until the new harvest.

[littleminnie]

My garlic is mostly undersized this year due to bad planting beds last fall and the fall- winter- spring drought. I can make the lightest pull on them and they come out. They are all yellow- not tan/brown. Last fall I was redoing all my beds to be nice and straight. That meant some paths would now be beds. The landlord was supposed to disc so I could plant garlic but he never did. So I put off the garlic planting as long as I could and finally had to prep the beds by hand. They were like cement! One I double dug and one I tried to till. It was so dry and hard and was freezing at night so no watering could really be done much. The bed I double dug was planted with softnecks and most are ok. The bed I tried to till with a little tiller was hardnecks and most are all yellow and barely in the soil. They even scaped poorly. I usually have more than enough so I will just save what I need to plant of the biggest bulbs and next year will be fine.

I worried about my garlic quite a bit through winter and with good reason. It was unfortunate what happened in fall. It often happens that way with my land rental but now my beds are permanent so it won't happen again.

[MikeH]

Peel your garlic in 10 seconds.

[ottawagardener]

Interesting to know as I have a bunch of potato onion in seed. I'll have to go out and collect it today to see what happens.

[paquebot]

We plant every garlic clove including softneck "slivers" and get pretty close to the same size bulbs from each. Small cloves have the same genes as the large ones. I havested 40 S&H Silverskin today and there was very little variation in size despite some cloves having been mere slivers. Environmental conditions and nutrients are more important than clove size in determining what it will produce.

Martin

[mountaindweller]

Interesting. How tight do you space garlic? And do you grow something in between like fast lettuces? It sits around very long and occupies quite some space. I want to grow it in the netted area as it seems possums like garlic (what don't they like and they have ever changing tastes)